Senate rejects advancing defense bill

The Senate tried but failed to end debate on the annual defense authorization bill after a day of historic upheaval on Thursday, leaving work unfinished and casting doubt on the ultimate passage of the measure.

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Republicans and Democrats had said it was imperative that the Senate finish the $625 billion National Defense Authorization Act before members took their two-week Thanksgiving break. But hopes waned as lawmakers remained divided on how to amend the legislation. Its future prospects weren’t clear.

Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was even more blunt. “I don’t know whether NDAA becomes law or not,” he said.

On the other side of the Capitol, senior members of the House Armed Services Committee huddled to discuss the possibility that House and Senate leaders might have to work on a compressed schedule to iron out the differences between the two versions of the measure.

“There’s enough room there for us to get it done this year, through a number of different scenarios,” said Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), chairman of the Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee. “We want to make sure the House is ready to go, regardless of what the Senate does.”

The House committee’s chairman, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), and its ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, said in a joint statement that “time is running short to reach an agreement this year, but it has not yet run out.” They urged senators to take up the defense bill again after returning from two-week Thanksgiving recess.

While it’s not uncommon for work on the defense bill to trickle into the final days of the calendar year, lawmakers now face a significant time crunch. The Senate doesn’t plan to return from its recess until Dec. 9, while the House plans to adjourn for the year on Dec. 13. That leaves just a few days in December to resolve differences between the two chambers and finish the legislation before year’s end.

Senators have been deadlocked since Tuesday over how to proceed, with Republicans insisting on an amendment process that would allow them to vote scores of provisions. Meanwhile, Reid and other Democrats were trying to hasten the process by putting in place strict limits on the number of votes, avoiding amendments on controversial issues, including Iran sanctions and health care.

The Senate Armed Services Committee approved the defense authorization bill in June, but Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) didn’t bring the measure to the floor until this month.

The committee chairman, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), said Wednesday that if lawmakers didn’t resolve the impasse, “then for the first time in 52 years there will not be a defense authorization bill, in the absence of some miracle.”

On Thursday, Levin read a long list of what he said would be the problems if the defense bill didn’t pass: Troops won’t get bonuses, military construction can’t begin, school districts can’t get aid payments and many other legal authorities will lapse.

The Armed Services Committee’s top Republican, Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, went to the Senate floor Thursday afternoon to repeat his offer to include 25 amendments for each party. Ahead of his floor speech, he said he was still hopeful that amendment votes could still happen before senators before the Thanksgiving break. “We’re 99 percent of the way there,” he said.

If his colleagues didn’t agree, Inhofe warned, he’d oppose his own bill — and later made good on his promise with a “no” vote on moving forward.